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Unread 09-12-2013, 21:42
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EricH EricH is offline
New year, new team
FRC #1197 (Torbots)
Team Role: Engineer
 
Join Date: Jan 2005
Rookie Year: 2003
Location: SoCal
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Re: Battery powered raspberry pi

Quote:
Originally Posted by yash101 View Post
I think I should design a small lithium battery pack of something like 180mAh to be COTS legal. [...]
What do ya guys think about some system to get legal in COTS, to allow a small battery? [...]
So, I thought of a small LiPo Charger circuit, EXCEEDING safety standards, to charge the battery off the robot battery, or a computer mini-USB. [...]

I think that if I can make something like this in the Christmas Break and get it FRC legal, probably by 2016, not before 2015, it could be a game-changer for one of the teams who wants vision tracking!
Just one moment, before you get carried away. Now, I'm going to issue the standard disclaimer that last year's rules are not this year's rules, or next year's rules.

Under last year's rules, such a system would NOT be legal, or if it WERE legal, it would be impractical. Last year's R34 (should have) made that VERY clear: ALL electrical energy had to come from one of the two legal types of robot batteries, UNLESS the battery in question was integral to a COTS computing device, and only powering things connected directly to said computing device.

Now, there would be a potential loophole, if you happened to completely drain the battery pack before each match and charge it very quickly off of the robot main battery during autonomous--but that quickly goes south when you realize that the charging is going to take time, probably more time than the match.


Let me make this even clearer: As few as 3 seasons ago, maybe 4, the COTS computing device battery exception did not even exist. It didn't exist until AFTER a team managed to get a computer onto their robot under then-current FRC rules that extremely limited such items.


tl;dr: This ain't gonna be legal, or you're gonna be building and selling quite a few of them. And, as pointed out earlier, engineering only looks easy--get right down to it, and you'll have enough obstacles popping up to make you wonder why you ever got into this project.
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Past teams:
2003-2007: FRC0330 BeachBots
2008: FRC1135 Shmoebotics
2012: FRC4046 Schroedinger's Dragons

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